One Day Closer To Springtime

We are in the middle of a warming trend that is powered by our wonderful Chinook winds. Today was about 5° and I think we are to have plus temperatures for the next few days. Chinooks are what makes the winter in Calgary quite tolerable because you know that no matter how cold and shitty the weather is, it will warm up eventually.

When we first moved to Calgary, there would only be one or two Chinooks and for the most part winter would come to stay like an unwanted relative. The weather was so terrible; we might as well have been living in Edmonton or Winnipeg. The only thing that made it tolerable back then was that we weren’t living in Edmonton or Winnipeg. I don’t know how people living in Edmonton or Winnipeg managed to get up every morning, or even if they did get up every morning. I suppose they found solace in the fact that they didn’t live in Inuvik or Yellowknife and running into a polar bear on the main street wasn’t an issue.

The worst that we will run into on the street in downtown Calgary are conservative members of parliament and they rarely will attack you. They are more likely to serve you some cold pancakes and sausage, a phoney smile and a promise that taxes will not go up this year. Probably not. Come to think of it, I think I would prefer the polar bears.

I’m actually thinking about getting the bike out and doing some winter riding. Riding is mostly safe, but the side streets can be treacherous with the covering of glacial ice. I used to ride in the winter all of the time, but in the past few years I have opted to take the four wheel transportation. It is safer and quite a bit warmer. Mind you, staying warm was never a problem when you were winter riding, just so long as you wore the proper clothing and didn’t have a mechanical break down which would cause you to walk in -30°.

Since it was so nice and warm today, I took the opportunity to take the Christmas lights down. They came down surprisingly quickly and there wasn’t the fear of falling to my death even once. The more challenging aspect to taking Christmas down is to find an efficient, safe way to store the decorations. I always wonder where these people that have life sized Mary, Joseph, Jesus, three wise men and an assortment of farm animals would store all of that crap. A house with that would also have thousands of lights, wreaths and an assortment of eight reindeers, stars and of course a Santa and his sled. You would need to use the entire garage or the whole basement. I suppose you could have warehouse space rented, but that is borderline nuts.

It is a difficult balance when Christmas decorating. You need to have enough to say “I love Christmas and Christmas loves me.” Too few decorations and people just assume that you are Jewish or Hindi. If you have too many decorations, then people think that you are nuts and they are probably right. Anyways, the decorations are finally down and by the time I get them stowed away winter will be back.

I’m not looking forwards to the cold weather again, but every day of warm means that we are one day closer to springtime.